The myth of closure
28/06/16 04:35
Last week, Krista Tippett, host of “On Being” interviewed Pauline Boss. Boss is Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota. She has written several books on trauma, loss, dementia, and other topics. Her 1999 book, “Ambiguous Loss” has become a staple in the field of family counseling. Early in the interview she said something that I believe is essential to the way I think about grief and loss. “There is no such thing as closure. We have to live with loss, clear or ambiguous. And it’s OK. It’s OK. And it’s OK to see people who are hurting and just to say something simple. ‘I’m so sorry.’ You don’t have to say more than that.”
“There is no such thing as closure. We have to live with loss, clear or ambiguous.”
Our society has been selling the myth of closure for so many years that people have begun to believe it. It is true that no one can describe exactly where closure comes in the case of the death of a loved one. Some say that the burial and committal service bring closure. It is often argued that, in the case of a murder, the death of the murderer brings closure. Closure is one of the arguments offered in favor of capital punishment. The problem is that the death of someone you love is not something that you can get over.
Last Saturday, I was visiting with a couple whose son died three years ago. They were talking about him, remembering some of the good times that they had together and the subject, while bringing up joy, also renewed their sense of pain and loss. There were some tears as I asked about him. There are some who say that I shouldn’t have engaged in such conversation three years after the event. But I knew that they would be thinking of that topic this week as they face the anniversary and in the past they have been very grateful that I am willing to talk about their loss long after it has become a topic to avoid by so many of their friends and acquaintances. “Sometimes,” the mother said, “it seems like the rest of the world has forgotten him.”
I repeated what I have said many times to them over the past three years. “This is not something that you can get over. It is something that you have to get through.”
Since that conversation, I’ve had a serious conversation with a widow who lost her husband only three weeks ago and another widow whose husband died two weeks ago. For them the loss is fresh and the wound is deep and tender. They haven’t had much time to heal. The memory of the funeral is still very close to their consciousness. I don’t have many words to offer to them, simply a hug and a reminder that I care and that I appreciate the pain that they are going through.
It is a pain I can’t quite imagine. I have not had to face the loss of my wife.
It was 46 years ago that my sister died. A lot has happened in those years. I married. We graduated from college and graduate school and formed our careers. My father died. We had children. Our children grew up. We became grandparents. My brother died. My mother died. I have officiated at hundreds of funerals and been involved in hundreds of death notifications to family members. I have watched the process of grief from many different perspectives. I have grown gray and nearly white. But I have never forgotten my sister. I have never lost the sense of pain that came with her death. I have never forgotten how it seemed to redefine our family. These are things that I will carry with me all of my life and they are part of the legacy that I have passed on to our children.
There is no closure. You have to learn to live with grief and loss.
I don’t think this is a bad thing. Our lives are permanently affected by the relationships we have. When you love, it changes everything. When you experience the death of a loved one, your world can’t go back to “normal.” Things don’t return to the way that they were. You have to discover a new normal - the normal of living with grief.
It is a cruel twist of language to talk to people about closure as if there will come a day when they will get over the pain of their loss.
Recently I was recalling a dinner I attended about 40 years ago. I was a young man, just a few years into being married. We were students in graduate school and for some reason we were asked to sit at table with a retiring professor and his wife at their retirement dinner given by the seminary. Our selection to sit at the head table was probably based on the fact that my wife, Susan, had been assistant director in the preschool founded by the wife of the seminary professor, which had been closed by the school earlier that year. I was sad, and a little bit angry over the retirement of the professor. He was one of the main reasons I had chosen that school and I felt that he had been pushed to retire by an administration bent on making changes, not all of which were positive in terms of maintaining a first-rate department of Christian Education. There I was at the table, between the wife of the professor and the wife of the president of the seminary. The wife of the seminary president was trying to command my attention with conversation that, frankly, wasn’t very interesting to me. I was caught up in my grief and she was trying to make me feel better by changing the subject.
I remember the event so clearly and now I understand that I was grieving and that she was trying to provide a simple solution and to take away my grief. Despite the fact that grief can sometimes make friends and others uncomfortable, taking away one’s grief is a cruel response. Grief is a natural process and worthy of our attention.
If you are called to be with someone who is grieving, don’t promise that they will get over it. Don’s promise that they’ll feel better some day. Don’t promise anything. If you don’t know what to say, say nothing. Allow grief to take its own pace. And don’t promise that closure will come. It is a myth that is best avoided.
“There is no such thing as closure. We have to live with loss, clear or ambiguous.”
Our society has been selling the myth of closure for so many years that people have begun to believe it. It is true that no one can describe exactly where closure comes in the case of the death of a loved one. Some say that the burial and committal service bring closure. It is often argued that, in the case of a murder, the death of the murderer brings closure. Closure is one of the arguments offered in favor of capital punishment. The problem is that the death of someone you love is not something that you can get over.
Last Saturday, I was visiting with a couple whose son died three years ago. They were talking about him, remembering some of the good times that they had together and the subject, while bringing up joy, also renewed their sense of pain and loss. There were some tears as I asked about him. There are some who say that I shouldn’t have engaged in such conversation three years after the event. But I knew that they would be thinking of that topic this week as they face the anniversary and in the past they have been very grateful that I am willing to talk about their loss long after it has become a topic to avoid by so many of their friends and acquaintances. “Sometimes,” the mother said, “it seems like the rest of the world has forgotten him.”
I repeated what I have said many times to them over the past three years. “This is not something that you can get over. It is something that you have to get through.”
Since that conversation, I’ve had a serious conversation with a widow who lost her husband only three weeks ago and another widow whose husband died two weeks ago. For them the loss is fresh and the wound is deep and tender. They haven’t had much time to heal. The memory of the funeral is still very close to their consciousness. I don’t have many words to offer to them, simply a hug and a reminder that I care and that I appreciate the pain that they are going through.
It is a pain I can’t quite imagine. I have not had to face the loss of my wife.
It was 46 years ago that my sister died. A lot has happened in those years. I married. We graduated from college and graduate school and formed our careers. My father died. We had children. Our children grew up. We became grandparents. My brother died. My mother died. I have officiated at hundreds of funerals and been involved in hundreds of death notifications to family members. I have watched the process of grief from many different perspectives. I have grown gray and nearly white. But I have never forgotten my sister. I have never lost the sense of pain that came with her death. I have never forgotten how it seemed to redefine our family. These are things that I will carry with me all of my life and they are part of the legacy that I have passed on to our children.
There is no closure. You have to learn to live with grief and loss.
I don’t think this is a bad thing. Our lives are permanently affected by the relationships we have. When you love, it changes everything. When you experience the death of a loved one, your world can’t go back to “normal.” Things don’t return to the way that they were. You have to discover a new normal - the normal of living with grief.
It is a cruel twist of language to talk to people about closure as if there will come a day when they will get over the pain of their loss.
Recently I was recalling a dinner I attended about 40 years ago. I was a young man, just a few years into being married. We were students in graduate school and for some reason we were asked to sit at table with a retiring professor and his wife at their retirement dinner given by the seminary. Our selection to sit at the head table was probably based on the fact that my wife, Susan, had been assistant director in the preschool founded by the wife of the seminary professor, which had been closed by the school earlier that year. I was sad, and a little bit angry over the retirement of the professor. He was one of the main reasons I had chosen that school and I felt that he had been pushed to retire by an administration bent on making changes, not all of which were positive in terms of maintaining a first-rate department of Christian Education. There I was at the table, between the wife of the professor and the wife of the president of the seminary. The wife of the seminary president was trying to command my attention with conversation that, frankly, wasn’t very interesting to me. I was caught up in my grief and she was trying to make me feel better by changing the subject.
I remember the event so clearly and now I understand that I was grieving and that she was trying to provide a simple solution and to take away my grief. Despite the fact that grief can sometimes make friends and others uncomfortable, taking away one’s grief is a cruel response. Grief is a natural process and worthy of our attention.
If you are called to be with someone who is grieving, don’t promise that they will get over it. Don’s promise that they’ll feel better some day. Don’t promise anything. If you don’t know what to say, say nothing. Allow grief to take its own pace. And don’t promise that closure will come. It is a myth that is best avoided.